My mother always hated psychic mediums.
You know the whole deal. Creepy tent in the corner of the fair, tacky patterns and symbols on all the fabrics, and old woman with a cheap glass ball on a coffee table covered with a blanket from Walmart. “Nothing but crooks and charlatans preying on the weak-minded,” she always used to say. “Just taking money from the foolish or the desperate and charming them up with parlor tricks and cold reading.
“We would never waste the gift on such tacky nonsense.”
The gift. That’s what she called it. It was a gift that my nights were filled with endless terrors and predictions of all the tragedies that would befall me in the near future. It was a gift that the other kids would never play with “the weirdo.” It was a gift that being around too many people blinded the eye-behind-my-eyes with noxiously colored auras and crowded my head with the painful babblings of a dozen voices whispering into the ear-behind-my-ears.
The schools thought I was autistic. They called that a gift too.
My mother taught me how to control myself. Now, she wasn’t teaching me how to become some crime fighting psychic detective or superhero or anything cool like that- she taught me how to live without clawing my hair out every day. I learned how to silence the voices, to read minds only when I wanted to and to mingle the rest with background noise. She taught me how to interpret my dreams and separate the nonsense possibilities from the dreadful certainties. Most importantly, however, was teaching me not to pretend I don’t know more about people than what they have already told me and not finish their sentences for them.
I used to do that a lot. Again, school chaulked it up to autism. The gift of an atypical mind.
She taught me well, but I never had a chance to learn it all. I remember that day well- I was in algebra class, and we were in the middle of a test when I felt it. It was like an ocean of dread washing over me. I knew right then and there what had happened. I dropped my pencil, and I walked out of the classroom. I could hear my heart thumping in my chest as I made my way to the principal’s office, sitting in a nearby chair that I found myself in almost every week. “Dillan, please come to the principal’s office” I heard over the loudspeaker, already opening the door when he began to speak. I caught Principal Gallard with his hand still on the microphone, the shock evident on his face. He said quite a few very cruel things in his head about the “weird kid” before being overcome with a wave of guilt for the thought. I didn’t mind, mom had taught me not to judge people for their intrusive thoughts.
“My mother is dead.” I said, before he could have a chance to speak. He avoided eye contact and his cheeks reddened.
“Uh, no, nonono. She’s…” He stuttered. “she’s just been hurt, kid. I don’t know how bad, but she’s on her way to the hospital. The police are on their way to bring you there. I’m sure she will be okay.”
She wasn’t. She was dead before she reached the hospital, and I never got to say goodbye.
There’s an old joke about charlatan psychics failing to foresee disaster as proof that they are frauds. The truth is more complicated than that. We have premonitions of our own demise constantly. Our dreams show us every possibly tragedy, not every likely tragedy. Sometimes we see something useful, like knowing when to take extra care before crossing a street because a drunk driver is coming, or when your friend won’t get the joke and you’ll make an ass of yourself if you say it. Most of the time, however, they are wild impractical situations that would never happen. The “random thugs rob the restaurant your mother works at and shoot her nine times for $150 in the register” dreams come almost weekly. You tend to filter them out as nonsense, and you ironically never see them coming.
I never met another person like us after she died. I was sent to live with my father’s parents. I could always sense the brightness of my mother’s soul, shining with the strength of her gift. If normal souls glowed like candles in the dark she was a light bulb, shining brighter than a hundred normal people combined. I never met my father, but she said he was just like her. Wherever he got the gift, it was not from my grandparents- grandma was just a normal candle, and grandpa… well, bless his soul, but he was more like a match. One of those soft ones from the little cardboard books they use to light pipes. They did well enough to raise me, but they had nothing to teach me. I doubt they even understood what it was, and I was not about to tell them. Mom said not to trust it anyone who wasn’t like me, not even family.
The years moved on, I grew up, and I was always alone. I had friends, of course, and I even dated here or there. Even when surrounded by people who cared about me, there was always the lingering fact that there was nobody quite like me. Nobody to relate to. Nobody to talk to. And, although it pains my ego to admit it, nobody to teach me more about the gift. I don’t know what else my mother was saving for later in life but something tells me the education was not meant to end at twelve years old.
I guess that’s why I always had a thing for psychic readings. I tell myself it’s because I find them funny. Seeing people pretend to have what I have and doing a poor show of it makes me feel special, especially when I use the gift to trip them up. The truth is that, beneath it all, I think I am just looking for another. Mom said real psychics don’t sell the gift for $20 a pop, but I have been a broke college student and I know how tempting it can be. I feel shame at the thought of it, but I did do a handful of parlor tricks among friends when I was running especially low. Just for ramen money, and I always acted like there was a reasonable explanation. I can understand why someone might stoop lower than that, if they were desperate enough.
My interest in meeting new psychic mediums to humiliate is why I agreed to go out with y coworkers last weekend. I’m always up for a chance to find and embarrass another scammer. *He wants to invite me to the winter fair,* I thought as Jason approached my desk on Friday. “Hey Dillan, some of us were planning on going to the fair this weekend, wanna come?” I had time to consider the offer before it was made.
“Maybe, who all will be there?” I asked as if I didn’t already know.
“Just you, me, Bob, Sarah and Jane.” He said. They are all good colleagues, and Jason is almost a friend, but I was the most interested by Jane’s presence. She always has the most mushy intrusive thoughts whenever I look at her, and I would be a liar if I were to say I wasn’t at least open to them.
And so the weekend came, and we went off to see the fair. Ice sculptures, children skating on a frozen pond, out-of-season Christmas decorations, the works. I was delighted to read a brochure advertising that a psychic booth was set up on the opposite side of the grounds for some woman named Madam Labaou, but I had barely read the words when I was struck by a sensation I had never felt in my life.
It was like when you step out of a dark room and into the sunlight. The eye-behind-my-eyes was momentarily blinded, and my temple felt like I was struck on the forehead by a hammer. “Uh, yeah, I’d like that Jason.”
“Would you like a… oh, uh, yeah I’ll get you a hot chocolate.” Jason said, asking a question I had already answered. I haven’t slipped up like that in months, but my mind was out of focus. Across the grounds, at what I assume was the psychic’s tent, was a soul more intense than any I had seen before. My mother was a light bulb among candles, but this Madam Labaou, as I assumed she must be, felt like a lighthouse beacon in the fog. I was drawn to it like a moth to a flame.
I pushed my friends away and I walked through the snow. I ignored the people around me, ignored their bodies and their minds to push through them on the straightest path. This soul drew me closer with each step, as if guiding my way through booths and sculptures and crowds. Soon I could see her tent, just as tacky as all of the others I had seen, but I just knew, knew deep withing that all my questions were about to be answered. That all of my problems were moments away from being erased. My thoughts for the first time in forever were calm and set on one path.
And then I was sucker punched in the back of the head.
I lost concentration. I fell into the snow. I could hear the thoughts of those around me, a dozen strangers wondering what had just happened. Why that woman had just assaulted me out of nowhere. I looked up to my assailant, and I saw her standing over me. She was winded, as if she had run to me from a great distance, and her hand was still balled in a fist. She was around my age, with red hair and piercing green eyes. Her soul… grew, before my eyes. I had never seen a soul change or, as I quickly realized, I had never seen my own perception of a soul change. She had the gift, and she was looking at me as if I had grown three eyes.
*WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?* I heard her voice in my mind. My mother taught me to speak without speaking, and she only used it in emergencies. *WHY AREN’T YOU CLOAKING? IT SEES YOU.*
*What… cloaking? What are you talking about?* I asked sheepishly, my mind still in a daze. Who was this woman, and why did she distract me from meeting Madam Labaou?
Her face changed to an expression of confusion, followed by understanding. She grabbed my head, and turned my face back to the tent. The light was still there, but now I could see what had fallen beneath my perception before. It was… wrong. I had been blinded by its intensity, and had missed the putrid rot that permeated the light. The light was malignant, and now that I had broken free it was *angry.*
I was pulled to my feet and running before I knew what was happening. The girl lead me through the crowds, the baleful eye glaring into my soul as we ran. For the first time in my life, I realized that there might be a damn good reason why I have never met anyone else like me.